I think that the real reason that these neural signals seem so "novel" to the researchers is because the signals are actually not present at all. It is more likely that the signals that the researchers measured were artefacts. Due to the huge density of neurons in the cortex (they were measuring signals in the frontal cortex), there is a real risk that a poorly designed configuration of recording electrodes could measure local currents from neighbouring regions of the cortex. These local currents could easily be incorrectly attributed to the existance of "mirror cells".
There is no functionality provided by these supposed "mirror cells" that can not be explained by the already well documented phenomenon of "conditioned response". If mirror cells really did exist, do you seriously suppose that in over 100 years of electroencephalography no-one would have detected them before? I am confident that this reasearch will be proved to be fundamentally flawed upon deeper investigation.
Those LED sites were interesting, but they fail to mention another form of LED technology which has recently been developed by researchers at MIT. This new form of LED is able to produce a sound output, as well as the more usual light output.
These SLEDs (Sound and Light Emitting Diodes) work in much the same way as a normal LED - spontaneous emission of photons from a forward biased p-n junction. But in the SLED, some of the photons of light are redirected through a resonant liquid crystal cavity, which causes vibrations of the resonant cavity at harmonics of the photon frequency. By changing the voltage applied to the liquid crystal cavity, different resonant points can be found and thus the frequency of the sound can be altered.
The researchers believe that this technology can be used to produce laptop screens which produce sounds from the screen itself, without the need for unwieldy speakers. They are also working on using lower frequencies, so that touching an image on the LED screen will produce a tactile sensation, as if you were touching the object in the image itself.
There's more stuff about SLED technology at the website of the journal Science.
to say that "anything that can be done should be done, no matter what the consequenses" sounds like a worse alternative
But everything should be tried at least once. To use the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which you quoted, the nuclear bomb was shown to be too extreme for everyday use, so this scientific idea Darwinated. This doesn't necessarily mean that nuclear weapons are in any way wrong or immoral, it just means that they weren't useful in everyday life. In fact, it could even be argued that nuclear weapons were a good thing, since the nuclear deterrent probably prevented many smaller conflicts from occuring and thus prevented further loss of life.
Every scientific innovation should be given the chance to prove its value to the human race. It is a crime to never give an idea to demonstrate its worth, simply on the basis that it may be considered immoral.
This really is a miracle of modern science. Although this case has
provoked much controversy, from people who think it is "unethical", in my
opinion it is perfectly acceptable.
I have heard people describe it as "against God's will" to concieve a
child for the purpose of using the baby as "medication" for another sick
child. But surely it is even more wrong to deny an existing child the
right to life, just because of some warped ideas about morality?
Morality has become an outdated concept. Scientific progress has meant
that many new ideas, which were never conceived when society previously decided what was "moral", have now become immoral by default. And society's hang-ups over morality are preventing the human race from maximising its full potential. I find it disappointing that our moral guardians are deciding that human cloning is wrong and immoral, and I'll never get the chance to clone myself and live beyond my normal lifespan.
Morality and religion simply aren't relevant to the fast-changing modern world. They represent mankind's fear of change and threaten to keep the human race locked in the medieval era. If something is scientifically possible, then it should automatically be moral and good. Only the scientifically impossible things such as necromancy and worship of idols should be classed as immoral.
We should celebrate this medical innovation as a miracle of science which it clearly is, rather than berating it and questioning it on moral grounds.
What is it with you feminists who think that just because a woman displays some kind of interest in a masculine domain that they are entitled to some kind of protection?
I am not a feminist, I believe in equality. I am not saying that I should be entitled to protection, I am just saying that if people are going to flame me then it should be on the grounds of what I say, not simply because I don't have a Y chromosome.
At the first sign of controversy you start whining about sexism as if you had some kind of right to air your empty-headed views in public.
It's a public forum, I do have a right to air my views, empty-headed or not. Get over it.
It's a well known and scientifically proven fact that women's brains are a) smaller than mens and b) less able to cope with technologically complex tasks.
Both of your so-called facts are bullshit. I am perfectly able to cope with technologically complex tasks (I am studying for a PhD in semiconductor physics - do you have a similar level of education?). And when was it proven that there is a direct link between human brain size and intelligence?
Then what's she doing here? We don't want people like that posting to this forum, the signal-to-noise ration is low enough already.
Last time I checked, they weren't rationing the signal-to-noise here. If the signal to noise ratio is low around here, it is because of bigots like you with an axe to grind. She has every right to post on this forum. It is a public forum, everyone has a right to post here. You may not like what she has to say, nor her methods of saying it, but you should respect her right to say it. Your elitism sickens me.
I know this is going to be an unpopular viewpoint, but I think the way in which Patricia has been treated on (what seems to be) her first post to Slashdot is disgraceful. She's been moderated down as a "Troll" and also received a deluge of patronising, sexist comments from male posters. The double standards exhibited on Slashdot amaze me - the majority of Slashdot readers post large and well-reasoned rants about how discrimination on any grounds (race, disability, age etc.) is wrong and evil, yet they feel quite happy to hurl sexist abuse at this poor girl.
I haven't posted to Slashdot for a while because I was getting sick of this kind of sexist abuse. I tried to share my insight with Slashdot (and I was mostly successful - I achieved a +1 bonus within a couple of weeks), and yet I was still greeted with ignorant comments like "You're just a girl, what do you know?". Some people obviously found it too challenging to see past my sex and read what I was actually saying. I'm a big girl and at first I didn't take much notice of this sort of small-minded abuse, but after a while I decided it was no longer worth the hassle to post to Slashdot. Does Slashdot really want to drive insightful posters away?
The way that Patricia has been treated today is disgusting, and I hope you're all ashamed of yourselves. She implies that she's 16, so of course she's going to make a few naive comments. But this is hardly an excuse for the sort of hostility she has received. Maybe people should have politely corrected her, rather than resorting to flames. We should be trying to nurture and encourage young female geeks, rather than treating them so badly.
Patricia: keep posting to Slashdot, and try your best to ignore the comments of some of these cavemen. The majority of Slashdot readers and moderators are decent people, but there are a few sexist neanderthals who try to spoil it for everyone.
This is a very interesting development. Although it is fun to knock VA Linux around here, I have found the professionalism which VA and Andover have brought to the development of the Slash code to be refreshing. I may be wrong on this, but I think that Pudge is employed on a full-time basis by VA/Andover to maintain the Slash code, and Pudge's input to Slash has worked wonders. Updates to Slash are now released regularly, and I have found Slash to be remarkably easy to install, configure and maintain. Slash is certainly no longer the fearsome monster that Rob used to portay it as on the Slashdot code page
Considering mySQL is an integral part of Slash, it is good that VA Linux have chosen to invest money in the development of mySQL. Not only is this repaying a debt to a piece of software which has made their biggest site (Slashdot) what it is today, but I can see that greater co-operation between the mySQL developers and the Slash developers may be good for those of us who run Slash sites. Perhaps a version of mySQL specially optimised for the peculiarities of Slash may arise from this co-operation.
I hope today's announcement will cause those members of the Slashdot community who view VA Linux as the Borg of the Linux world to think differently. VA are showing that the open source business model does work, despite what their detractors on Slashdot say.
After all the fuss last month over people posting Microsoft's copyrighted material to Slashdot, now someone's gone and done it again. Let's hope Microsoft see this as "Fair Use" before they unleash the lawyers again.
Now, if we could just find a way to silence the elitist pigs, we could increase the signal to noise ratio considerably.
By silencing the "elitist pigs" you are actually introducing elitism, by making a subjective judgement that something is worthless and therefore ought to be silenced. Your logic contradicts itself, and has thus contributed to a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio. Do you have any well-reasoned criticism of my post, or are you just going waste my time by posting flames and poor logic?
too many people on the net who don't have a fucking clue about anything, and all they do is take up bandwidth by downloading huge fuck-off Flash animations and waste server space with crappy Geocities home pages that have pictures of themselves and their dogs.
I think you are entirely correct with this assessment of the average Joe Sixpack internet user. There used to be a time when search engines were flooded with hundreds of links to pr0n sites. Nowadays, although the pr0n sites are still present, there is also a deluge of the aforementioned personal homepages. These homepages lack any worthwhile content and thus spoil the signal to noise ratio of the internet, making it almost impossible to use a search engine to track down useful information.
In order for people to gain an amateur radio license, it is first necessary for them to pass an examination. This certification process helps to teach prospective radio amateurs about good telecommunications practice and also tends to weed out people with a Geocities homepage mentality. Therefore, the (metaphorical) signal-to-noise ratio of amateur radio is far greater than that of the internet.
Although this sounds drastic and is completely unfeasible, it would be nice if there was some sort of mandatory certification process before people are allowed to publish on the internet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the internet would improve greatly, and the interent would be easier to search and index. This would allow the internet to realise its potential as the greatest stockpile of mankind's knowledge, and this would be of benefit to everyone (including Joe Sixpack).
The question of whether or not the GPL is a contract seems to be a major part of this article. You can correct me if I am wrong (politely please!), but I thought for a contract to be enforceable, there has to be an element of "consideration". In other words, the contract must involve a two-way exchange in order for it to be valid - for example, a contract for the sale of goods involves one party supplying the other with the goods, in return for consideration (in this case money) from the other party. The wording and spirit of the GPL doesn't seem to include any consideration, since it is a one-way process - the software author gives her code to the world providing they follow her wishes with regard to keeping the source open. It is questionable whether the author gains any financial value from users respecting her wishes, so I don't think there is any consideration involved and hence it is unlikely that the GPL constitutes a contract.
I think the important issue is that the author of the GPL'ed software always owns the copyright to her work (unless she gives the copyright away or dies). The GPL is a means by which the author of the software effectively relaxes the copyright on her code and gives up some of her statutory rights to the software. So although redistributing GPL'ed code under a non-GPL license doesn't seem to constitute a breach of contract, it is more than likely a breach of copyright.
Legally speaking, what I have said (or what anyone else has said with regard to the GPL) may be wrong - the legal position of the GPL will only be clarified if and when a case gets to court.
While we're on the subject of overclocking, I wonder how many people are running a distributed.net client on an overclocked machine, against distributed.net's wishes? This piece from the distributed.net states clearly that distributed.net do not like people running their client on overclocked machines, since there is a possibility that the overclocked processor could produce an incorrect result, and thus jeopardise the entire project. The people who run distributed.net clients on overclocked boxes are very selfish, as they do not care that their actions may mean that millions of hours of other people's processor time may be wasted. Considering all the processor cycles I have donated to distributed.net, I would be furious if I found that the project has been spoiled by some kiddie running the RC5 client on an overclocked box.
I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest. Why not just go out and buy a fast processor? Considering the cost of some of the cooling devices that are used (Peltier coolers etc), it would probably be cheaper to buy a fast processor in the first place.
This approach may work for some institutions, such as the Universities who have banned Napster, but I cannot see it working for the commercial ISPs. As you mention, the main reason Universities have banned Napster is because it is a bandwidth hog - it would be bad publicity if the University was found to be indirectly aiding the distribution of copyrighted material, but their main motive for banning Napster is because it uses bandwidth and the University does not gain any (financial) value from this use of bandwidth.
On the other hand, commercial ISPs have a financial interest in people using their service - the longer you are online trading files by Napster and the larger the bill you run up. So it would be a bad idea (financially speaking) for ISPs to crack down on Napster use. Have you noticed how hard it is to get most ISPs to do anything about spam which originates from their service? This would be a similar situation. The ISP would be unlikely to investigate the pirated MP3s or ban the user until they were forced to by a court order. Which brings us back to the situation that less successful artists are unlikely to have the financial means to drag this sort of thing through the courts.
I've had a look at the Media Enforcer website and the licensing of the software is interesting. The software is free (as in beer), but the freely downloadable version does nothing of use - it returns incorrect IP adresses. To get a working version, you have to convince the author that your reasons for having a copy are pure and honourable. This suggests that the author is setting himself up as some sort of vigilante, ready to defend musicians against the evils of piracy. (Of course, he wrote the software, it's up to him how he distributes it)
I can see how this software may be useful for successful artists with enough money to attempt to prosecute people they suspect of distributing pirate MP3s. But I get the feeling that the author is hoping it will be used by smaller, less successful artists to protect their copyright. This leads to the question, what are these musicians going to do once they've got a list of IP adresses which are hawking their music? Smaller artists are unlikely to have the money to attempt to prosecute the pirates, so all they're going to be left with is the knowledge that their music is being pirated. Big deal. This software is of use only to the rich musicians and record companies - the people who are so rich that they are the people least financially affected by piracy. If the author of this software is unconnected with the RIAA, I wonder if he realises that the people his software is protecting are the same people who have been fucking him over for years with artificially inflated prices for recorded music.
I am not convinced by Jon's reasoning that the empowering of readers via the "New Media"/"Open Media" will result in the death of the "Old Media". If Jon's argument that the " agendas and political philosophies [of the New Media"] are rarely static, but continuously evolving, a gift of interactivity" is correct, then this seems like a reason for why the New Media will never replace the Old Media.
Not everyone is as open-minded as Slashdot readers, and even Slashdot readers are not as open-minded as they would like to think they are - just look how fast someone is moderated down for saying "Linux sucks". Advocates of the new media underestimate the inertia of the "establishment" and its desire to maintain the status quo. The average person does not want to encounter challenging ideas and shifting agendas and philosophies. People will read whichever newspaper agrees with their own philosophies and agendas, to give themselves that warm self-righteous feeling. Anything which challenges their own philospohy will be rejected as a heresy.
Although the new media will certainly be important (at least until the New New Media comes along), the old media will always remain more popular.
A quote from the ZDNet article makes an important point:
Transmeta chips and software, should they stand up to the testing of companies like IBM, could usher in a group of long battery life mininotebooks
I would be worried about purchasing one of the early models of any of Transmeta's new technology, since the reliability of their CPUs and other associated components has yet to be proven. Even huge companies with decades worth of experience in chip design and manufacture such as Intel have been known to have teething problems with new designs. Considering Transmeta's comparative lack of experience, the complexity and innovation in their product and the fact that the Crusoe chips are not an incremental improvement on an already established technology, there is a good chance that there will be some uknown bugs lurking in the designs.
Although buying state of the art technology is always nice and I have faith in the abilities of Linus and his colleagues, I would rather not risk my money until the technology has been thoroughly tested by real users, out in the real world.
a lot of what you're saying... epresents a very limited understanding of programming.
I've been coding since you were in short trousers, boy!
Anyone who thinks C or C++ is necessarily fast ought to spend a week using Windows 98 on a slow Pentium
Bad code is bad code, regardless of the language. But a skilled programmer will find that she can use C++ to produce faster and more efficient code than is possible with Perl.
CPU cycles (speed) being just one example of system resources.
I didn't give any indication of what quantities I was using to define "resources". But CPU cycles and memory allocation are very relevant measures of resources for x86 architectures.
I don't think it's just Perl you're objecting to here; it sounds like you think every program, including simple shell scripts, should be written in C++.
Well, almost. Providing the overhead of typing a few #includes and a main(){} wasn't too great in comparison to the length of the script, I would certainly consider writing a script in C (probably not C++ though). That's personal preference.
Your post is an obvious troll, but just for the record, C++ is much better than Perl for a variety of reasons:
1. Perl is slow. The inherent inefficiency of Perl becomes obvious as soon as the program becomes more than just a simple script. Compiled languages (such as C++) are the only serious option for coding any non-trivial software.
2. Perl makes inefficient use of available resources. The interpreted nature of Perl creates a huge overhead, thus wasting processor resources and making your quad Xeon box perform like an 8086. It is not possible to optimise your Perl code to make full use of your processor. C++ allows a wide variety of optimisation methods, and with a good compiler the speed of compiled C++ is indistinguishable from the speed of assembly language.
3. Perl is hard to maintain. It is impossible to create weakly-coupled, highly abstracted code in Perl, thus it is also impossible to maintain Perl code on large projects. Object Oriented languages, such as C++ which you seem to despise, win every time. Contrary to what you say, C++ is object oriented, Perl is not.
4. Perl is unecessary. There really is no sane reason to use Perl - The argument that Perl is simpler to learn is completely invalid, since any reasonably skilled Perl 'coder' can easily make the step up to C++. The skill lies in learning how to program, not how to produce correct syntax. The sheer inefficiency of Perl means that C++ is more suitable than Perl for 99% of programs.
5. C++ programming is a valuable skill. It is worthwhile for people to learn C++ (or plain C) since it is the industry standard programming language. Perl is perceived as a hobbyist language, therefore Perl programming skills are not very marketable to employers.
The only point of the "Unmaintained Free Software" projects page seems to be a shopping list for glory hunters. I can see that this page is going to be attract free software wannabees, who see the opportunity to take responsibility for an already partially complete codebase in order to try to get kudos as the project manager. In reality though, this is likely to be bad for the project. I doubt that these newcomers will see the project as little more than an ego boost and a nice addition to their curriculum vitae, and many of these new 'project managers' will lack the ability or dedication to put the project back on track. In fact this idea could end up harming the project if an inept project manager refuses to step down as the official leader of the project, if and when a more suitable project manager comes along.
I think that a parallel can be drawn between free software projects and the natural selection process which affects biological organisms - those projects which are redundant or poorly conceived (for example, the Java based word processor on the unmaintained projects page) will receive a lack of interest from the community, causing the developer(s) to lose interest and give up. Hence, the project dies by natural selection. On the other hand, good projects will have a natural vibrancy to them and should the main developers begin to lose interest, other developers will come forward to continue the development effort. The projects which are unmaintained are generally projects which have died for a good reason. Please let sleeping dogs lie.
I feel really angry about this. Bandwidth is an already scarce resource, and for them to waste a full 200GHz for this sort of research seems criminal. As the demand for wireless telecommunications for consumer use continues to boom, it seems crazy that they are devoting such a large slice of the spectrum to what will probably be fruitless research. A small number of astronomers will benefit from this move, at the expense of the rest of the world's population. Does this seem fair or reasonable?
The BBC article says "It is a win for science". This is a very naive attitude. It is a win for astronomy, nothing more. Surely science would benefit more if governments were to fund their scientists properly - astronomy is just a very small branch of science, and is a branch of science which does little to address the world's problems. This is just a token attempt by the governments of the world to try to show their commitment to science.
It seems to me that Debian advocates believe that the reason for KDE's non-inclusion is a problem with the QPL rather than a problem with Debian. If they believe that they would be morally wrong to include KDE in their distribution because it is not "free" enough for them, then this is their choice. But is there really a need to try to modify the QPL in order to satisfy them?
As we all know, the great thing about open source is that it empowers the user - if you do not like an aspect of the software, then you are perfecty free to fork the code and take things in your own direction. And this is what Corel have done with their Debian-based distribution. The Corel distro provides all the benefits of Debian (e.g. Debian package management, superior stability), but has KDE included too.
Yes, I'll admit that Corel is more than just Debian with KDE added - many of Corel's tactics remind me of M$'s "embrace and extend" philosophy. But the principle is the same - if you don't like things how they are then you are perfectly free to fork the code.
Surely it is fine to maintain the status quo, and allow Debian to remain without KDE (allowing it to maintain its moral philosophy) and to have other forked versions of Debian which include the non-free software that dome users require.
But how do you define "public domain"? The point of licences is to unambiguously tell people what they can and cannot do with the software. The phrase "public domain" may be interpreted in different ways by different people, therefore some form of licensing is necessary to clarify the situation. The pre-prepared BSD and GPL licenses provide a simple way for people to put a license with their code.
Section 4 of the GPL states that "You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License". Therefore, incorporating GPL'ed code into something which is non-GPL'ed invalidates the license on the GPL'ed code. Legally, the GPL'ed code must be removed.
The only way around this (that I can see) would be to convince the author of the GPL'ed to give you dispensation to release their code under a different license.
The way I see it, software licenses are like blood groups - different blood groups are incompatible and must be kept separate (or else all sorts of Bad Things happen), and the same is true for licences. To avoid trouble, it is better to make sure all code is released under the same licence. The GPL is by far the most restrictive licence ever conceived in this respect, and rather than giving people the freedom to do whatever they wish with the code, it ends up being a straightjacket to restrict their freedom. I would prefer to see more people releasing their code under the BSD license.
I went to the grocery store and those bastards had the gall to make me pay for merchandise! Then I went to the gas station and had a heart attack when I found out gas wasn't free.
There is absolutly no need to adopt that sort of sarcastic tone. I was raising a valid point and because you don't agree with it, you try to belittle me?
I do not object to having to pay for things, but as I am a student I don't have much money to spend on software. Therefore, I prefer FreeBSD since it is cheaper than OpenBSD. Yes, I could download parts of the distro, but I would much rather have a complete CD so I can add extra programs as and when I want to. There's no need to insult me for that, little boy.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no functionality provided by these supposed "mirror cells" that can not be explained by the already well documented phenomenon of "conditioned response". If mirror cells really did exist, do you seriously suppose that in over 100 years of electroencephalography no-one would have detected them before? I am confident that this reasearch will be proved to be fundamentally flawed upon deeper investigation.
These SLEDs (Sound and Light Emitting Diodes) work in much the same way as a normal LED - spontaneous emission of photons from a forward biased p-n junction. But in the SLED, some of the photons of light are redirected through a resonant liquid crystal cavity, which causes vibrations of the resonant cavity at harmonics of the photon frequency. By changing the voltage applied to the liquid crystal cavity, different resonant points can be found and thus the frequency of the sound can be altered.
The researchers believe that this technology can be used to produce laptop screens which produce sounds from the screen itself, without the need for unwieldy speakers. They are also working on using lower frequencies, so that touching an image on the LED screen will produce a tactile sensation, as if you were touching the object in the image itself.
There's more stuff about SLED technology at the website of the journal Science.
But everything should be tried at least once. To use the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which you quoted, the nuclear bomb was shown to be too extreme for everyday use, so this scientific idea Darwinated. This doesn't necessarily mean that nuclear weapons are in any way wrong or immoral, it just means that they weren't useful in everyday life. In fact, it could even be argued that nuclear weapons were a good thing, since the nuclear deterrent probably prevented many smaller conflicts from occuring and thus prevented further loss of life.
Every scientific innovation should be given the chance to prove its value to the human race. It is a crime to never give an idea to demonstrate its worth, simply on the basis that it may be considered immoral.
I have heard people describe it as "against God's will" to concieve a child for the purpose of using the baby as "medication" for another sick child. But surely it is even more wrong to deny an existing child the right to life, just because of some warped ideas about morality?
Morality has become an outdated concept. Scientific progress has meant that many new ideas, which were never conceived when society previously decided what was "moral", have now become immoral by default. And society's hang-ups over morality are preventing the human race from maximising its full potential. I find it disappointing that our moral guardians are deciding that human cloning is wrong and immoral, and I'll never get the chance to clone myself and live beyond my normal lifespan.
Morality and religion simply aren't relevant to the fast-changing modern world. They represent mankind's fear of change and threaten to keep the human race locked in the medieval era. If something is scientifically possible, then it should automatically be moral and good. Only the scientifically impossible things such as necromancy and worship of idols should be classed as immoral.
We should celebrate this medical innovation as a miracle of science which it clearly is, rather than berating it and questioning it on moral grounds.
I am not a feminist, I believe in equality. I am not saying that I should be entitled to protection, I am just saying that if people are going to flame me then it should be on the grounds of what I say, not simply because I don't have a Y chromosome.
At the first sign of controversy you start whining about sexism as if you had some kind of right to air your empty-headed views in public.
It's a public forum, I do have a right to air my views, empty-headed or not. Get over it.
It's a well known and scientifically proven fact that women's brains are a) smaller than mens and b) less able to cope with technologically complex tasks.
Both of your so-called facts are bullshit. I am perfectly able to cope with technologically complex tasks (I am studying for a PhD in semiconductor physics - do you have a similar level of education?). And when was it proven that there is a direct link between human brain size and intelligence?
Then what's she doing here? We don't want people like that posting to this forum, the signal-to-noise ration is low enough already.
Last time I checked, they weren't rationing the signal-to-noise here. If the signal to noise ratio is low around here, it is because of bigots like you with an axe to grind. She has every right to post on this forum. It is a public forum, everyone has a right to post here. You may not like what she has to say, nor her methods of saying it, but you should respect her right to say it. Your elitism sickens me.
I haven't posted to Slashdot for a while because I was getting sick of this kind of sexist abuse. I tried to share my insight with Slashdot (and I was mostly successful - I achieved a +1 bonus within a couple of weeks), and yet I was still greeted with ignorant comments like "You're just a girl, what do you know?". Some people obviously found it too challenging to see past my sex and read what I was actually saying. I'm a big girl and at first I didn't take much notice of this sort of small-minded abuse, but after a while I decided it was no longer worth the hassle to post to Slashdot. Does Slashdot really want to drive insightful posters away?
The way that Patricia has been treated today is disgusting, and I hope you're all ashamed of yourselves. She implies that she's 16, so of course she's going to make a few naive comments. But this is hardly an excuse for the sort of hostility she has received. Maybe people should have politely corrected her, rather than resorting to flames. We should be trying to nurture and encourage young female geeks, rather than treating them so badly.
Patricia: keep posting to Slashdot, and try your best to ignore the comments of some of these cavemen. The majority of Slashdot readers and moderators are decent people, but there are a few sexist neanderthals who try to spoil it for everyone.
Considering mySQL is an integral part of Slash, it is good that VA Linux have chosen to invest money in the development of mySQL. Not only is this repaying a debt to a piece of software which has made their biggest site (Slashdot) what it is today, but I can see that greater co-operation between the mySQL developers and the Slash developers may be good for those of us who run Slash sites. Perhaps a version of mySQL specially optimised for the peculiarities of Slash may arise from this co-operation.
I hope today's announcement will cause those members of the Slashdot community who view VA Linux as the Borg of the Linux world to think differently. VA are showing that the open source business model does work, despite what their detractors on Slashdot say.
The BBC is also running an article on this, here
After all the fuss last month over people posting Microsoft's copyrighted material to Slashdot, now someone's gone and done it again. Let's hope Microsoft see this as "Fair Use" before they unleash the lawyers again.
Now, if we could just find a way to silence the elitist pigs, we could increase the signal to noise ratio considerably.
By silencing the "elitist pigs" you are actually introducing elitism, by making a subjective judgement that something is worthless and therefore ought to be silenced. Your logic contradicts itself, and has thus contributed to a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio. Do you have any well-reasoned criticism of my post, or are you just going waste my time by posting flames and poor logic?
I think you are entirely correct with this assessment of the average Joe Sixpack internet user. There used to be a time when search engines were flooded with hundreds of links to pr0n sites. Nowadays, although the pr0n sites are still present, there is also a deluge of the aforementioned personal homepages. These homepages lack any worthwhile content and thus spoil the signal to noise ratio of the internet, making it almost impossible to use a search engine to track down useful information.
In order for people to gain an amateur radio license, it is first necessary for them to pass an examination. This certification process helps to teach prospective radio amateurs about good telecommunications practice and also tends to weed out people with a Geocities homepage mentality. Therefore, the (metaphorical) signal-to-noise ratio of amateur radio is far greater than that of the internet.
Although this sounds drastic and is completely unfeasible, it would be nice if there was some sort of mandatory certification process before people are allowed to publish on the internet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the internet would improve greatly, and the interent would be easier to search and index. This would allow the internet to realise its potential as the greatest stockpile of mankind's knowledge, and this would be of benefit to everyone (including Joe Sixpack).
I think the important issue is that the author of the GPL'ed software always owns the copyright to her work (unless she gives the copyright away or dies). The GPL is a means by which the author of the software effectively relaxes the copyright on her code and gives up some of her statutory rights to the software. So although redistributing GPL'ed code under a non-GPL license doesn't seem to constitute a breach of contract, it is more than likely a breach of copyright.
Legally speaking, what I have said (or what anyone else has said with regard to the GPL) may be wrong - the legal position of the GPL will only be clarified if and when a case gets to court.
I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest. Why not just go out and buy a fast processor? Considering the cost of some of the cooling devices that are used (Peltier coolers etc), it would probably be cheaper to buy a fast processor in the first place.
--Lita (member of Team Slashdot)
On the other hand, commercial ISPs have a financial interest in people using their service - the longer you are online trading files by Napster and the larger the bill you run up. So it would be a bad idea (financially speaking) for ISPs to crack down on Napster use. Have you noticed how hard it is to get most ISPs to do anything about spam which originates from their service? This would be a similar situation. The ISP would be unlikely to investigate the pirated MP3s or ban the user until they were forced to by a court order. Which brings us back to the situation that less successful artists are unlikely to have the financial means to drag this sort of thing through the courts.
I can see how this software may be useful for successful artists with enough money to attempt to prosecute people they suspect of distributing pirate MP3s. But I get the feeling that the author is hoping it will be used by smaller, less successful artists to protect their copyright. This leads to the question, what are these musicians going to do once they've got a list of IP adresses which are hawking their music? Smaller artists are unlikely to have the money to attempt to prosecute the pirates, so all they're going to be left with is the knowledge that their music is being pirated. Big deal. This software is of use only to the rich musicians and record companies - the people who are so rich that they are the people least financially affected by piracy. If the author of this software is unconnected with the RIAA, I wonder if he realises that the people his software is protecting are the same people who have been fucking him over for years with artificially inflated prices for recorded music.
Not everyone is as open-minded as Slashdot readers, and even Slashdot readers are not as open-minded as they would like to think they are - just look how fast someone is moderated down for saying "Linux sucks". Advocates of the new media underestimate the inertia of the "establishment" and its desire to maintain the status quo. The average person does not want to encounter challenging ideas and shifting agendas and philosophies. People will read whichever newspaper agrees with their own philosophies and agendas, to give themselves that warm self-righteous feeling. Anything which challenges their own philospohy will be rejected as a heresy.
Although the new media will certainly be important (at least until the New New Media comes along), the old media will always remain more popular.
I would be worried about purchasing one of the early models of any of Transmeta's new technology, since the reliability of their CPUs and other associated components has yet to be proven. Even huge companies with decades worth of experience in chip design and manufacture such as Intel have been known to have teething problems with new designs. Considering Transmeta's comparative lack of experience, the complexity and innovation in their product and the fact that the Crusoe chips are not an incremental improvement on an already established technology, there is a good chance that there will be some uknown bugs lurking in the designs.
Although buying state of the art technology is always nice and I have faith in the abilities of Linus and his colleagues, I would rather not risk my money until the technology has been thoroughly tested by real users, out in the real world.
I've been coding since you were in short trousers, boy!
Anyone who thinks C or C++ is necessarily fast ought to spend a week using Windows 98 on a slow Pentium
Bad code is bad code, regardless of the language. But a skilled programmer will find that she can use C++ to produce faster and more efficient code than is possible with Perl.
CPU cycles (speed) being just one example of system resources.
I didn't give any indication of what quantities I was using to define "resources". But CPU cycles and memory allocation are very relevant measures of resources for x86 architectures.
I don't think it's just Perl you're objecting to here; it sounds like you think every program, including simple shell scripts, should be written in C++.
Well, almost. Providing the overhead of typing a few #includes and a main(){} wasn't too great in comparison to the length of the script, I would certainly consider writing a script in C (probably not C++ though). That's personal preference.
1. Perl is slow. The inherent inefficiency of Perl becomes obvious as soon as the program becomes more than just a simple script. Compiled languages (such as C++) are the only serious option for coding any non-trivial software.
2. Perl makes inefficient use of available resources. The interpreted nature of Perl creates a huge overhead, thus wasting processor resources and making your quad Xeon box perform like an 8086. It is not possible to optimise your Perl code to make full use of your processor. C++ allows a wide variety of optimisation methods, and with a good compiler the speed of compiled C++ is indistinguishable from the speed of assembly language.
3. Perl is hard to maintain. It is impossible to create weakly-coupled, highly abstracted code in Perl, thus it is also impossible to maintain Perl code on large projects. Object Oriented languages, such as C++ which you seem to despise, win every time. Contrary to what you say, C++ is object oriented, Perl is not.
4. Perl is unecessary. There really is no sane reason to use Perl - The argument that Perl is simpler to learn is completely invalid, since any reasonably skilled Perl 'coder' can easily make the step up to C++. The skill lies in learning how to program, not how to produce correct syntax. The sheer inefficiency of Perl means that C++ is more suitable than Perl for 99% of programs.
5. C++ programming is a valuable skill. It is worthwhile for people to learn C++ (or plain C) since it is the industry standard programming language. Perl is perceived as a hobbyist language, therefore Perl programming skills are not very marketable to employers.
I think that a parallel can be drawn between free software projects and the natural selection process which affects biological organisms - those projects which are redundant or poorly conceived (for example, the Java based word processor on the unmaintained projects page) will receive a lack of interest from the community, causing the developer(s) to lose interest and give up. Hence, the project dies by natural selection. On the other hand, good projects will have a natural vibrancy to them and should the main developers begin to lose interest, other developers will come forward to continue the development effort. The projects which are unmaintained are generally projects which have died for a good reason. Please let sleeping dogs lie.
The BBC article says "It is a win for science". This is a very naive attitude. It is a win for astronomy, nothing more. Surely science would benefit more if governments were to fund their scientists properly - astronomy is just a very small branch of science, and is a branch of science which does little to address the world's problems. This is just a token attempt by the governments of the world to try to show their commitment to science.
As we all know, the great thing about open source is that it empowers the user - if you do not like an aspect of the software, then you are perfecty free to fork the code and take things in your own direction. And this is what Corel have done with their Debian-based distribution. The Corel distro provides all the benefits of Debian (e.g. Debian package management, superior stability), but has KDE included too.
Yes, I'll admit that Corel is more than just Debian with KDE added - many of Corel's tactics remind me of M$'s "embrace and extend" philosophy. But the principle is the same - if you don't like things how they are then you are perfectly free to fork the code.
Surely it is fine to maintain the status quo, and allow Debian to remain without KDE (allowing it to maintain its moral philosophy) and to have other forked versions of Debian which include the non-free software that dome users require.
But how do you define "public domain"? The point of licences is to unambiguously tell people what they can and cannot do with the software. The phrase "public domain" may be interpreted in different ways by different people, therefore some form of licensing is necessary to clarify the situation. The pre-prepared BSD and GPL licenses provide a simple way for people to put a license with their code.
The only way around this (that I can see) would be to convince the author of the GPL'ed to give you dispensation to release their code under a different license.
The way I see it, software licenses are like blood groups - different blood groups are incompatible and must be kept separate (or else all sorts of Bad Things happen), and the same is true for licences. To avoid trouble, it is better to make sure all code is released under the same licence. The GPL is by far the most restrictive licence ever conceived in this respect, and rather than giving people the freedom to do whatever they wish with the code, it ends up being a straightjacket to restrict their freedom. I would prefer to see more people releasing their code under the BSD license.
There is absolutly no need to adopt that sort of sarcastic tone. I was raising a valid point and because you don't agree with it, you try to belittle me?
I do not object to having to pay for things, but as I am a student I don't have much money to spend on software. Therefore, I prefer FreeBSD since it is cheaper than OpenBSD. Yes, I could download parts of the distro, but I would much rather have a complete CD so I can add extra programs as and when I want to. There's no need to insult me for that, little boy.